Rebecca Walker Blog

Great interview about I gave about strippers in blockbuster films reduced to one line mid-way. But I'm not complaining, it's a great article.

By Lauren Schuker

On Sunday night, actress Marisa Tomei could take home an Academy
Award for her portrayal of a kind-hearted stripper in the critically
acclaimed film "The Wrestler." In a tradition that dates as far back as
the Oscar show itself, Ms. Tomei is the latest actress to win Hollywood
acclaim for playing a character with a job in the sex industry, such as
a striptease artist or streetwalker.

Not a day goes by that I don't think about what I'm eating, what I'm feeding my family, and how little I know about where our food is from, and who handles it as it moves from place to place.

When I see films like this or read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, I feel fortunate to have lived in Berkeley for several years and spent many delicious evenings at Alice Waters' restaurant, Chez Panisse.

The first time, I was taken for my 16th birthday by one of my fabulous gay "uncles" named Ivory, whom I lost to AIDS years later. I will always remember him as the person who introduced me to Lillet and the concept of the "prix fixe". It was incredible. We ate rabbit and drank Lillet and then had delicious flourless chocolate ganache.

In the life
I didn’t choose, I am a photographer and installation artist. I make
striking objects that live in a space beyond words. In the life I
chose, I write books about houses and people and feelings, but I reach
for my Yashica Mat camera to capture that which cannot be transcribed.
I photograph my son like Sally Mann captured her kids, running wild in
the nude. I try to photograph myself like Lorna Simpson would, in a
white dress, from behind, with one hand pouring water from a pewter
pitcher and the other pouring water from a plastic jug. I dream of
building a life-sized southern shack like the ones I used to pass on
the side of the road in Georgia, when I was a little girl, driving to
the family cemetery.

I’m no longer surprised when I open a box that’s been taped shut for
years, and find an artist’s monograph on top. A few books down, I’ll
find catalogs from shows that were up at MOMA when I was an intern. I
was sixteen then, sitting in front of Mark Rothko’s paintings for
hours. I’ve tried to give these books away, to sell them, anything to
keep from carrying them to another apartment, another country, but I
can’t. I need them.

• Ana Mendieta: Earth Body
How to describe Ana Mendieta? She was a Cuban-American artist who made
kick-ass, sensual, outrageously smart and seductive work. I love the
Silueta series--Mendieta paints her body to blend into/become various
pieces of earth. She is a tree, a body of lava scorching the earth,
dirt in an open grave with flowers sprouting from her skin.

Her performance pieces are brave: she walks to the wall and slides her
bare hands down it, leaving two red smears. She stops, walks away, and
we’re looking: it’s a vagina, it’s a gash, it’s Ana’s mark on the art
world, her X in the history of art.

• Artwork by Shirin Neshat
When I came back to the states after living in a Muslim country, Shirin
Neshat’s work explained everything to me: the power of the feminine in
Islamic culture; the powerlessness of the feminine in Islamic culture.
The hopelessness of the idea of “Islamic culture.” The way faith and
art and desire come together to form something like a drug for the
human soul. Beloved, a photograph of mother and son, mother covered in
hijab, son held close to the breast, is heart stopping. The baby sits
in the folds of the hijab. And to the left of the mother and child, the
Muslim pieta, there is a gun.

• Seydou Keita
I don’t remember where I first saw Keita’s portraits, or heard about
the man who made photographs in a small studio in Bamako, Mali, for
decades before being “discovered” by Western collectors. I do know that
I wanted to buy his work the second I saw it. His work captures so much
about Africa and modernity and style and colonialism and independence
and youth and art and vibrancy, I can barely stand to talk about it. I
bought two large prints when I sold my first book. He died a few years
later.

• Yayoi Kusama: Love Forever
Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama makes her art at a studio a few blocks
from the mental hospital in which she has lived, by choice, since the
early 1970s. “If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long
time ago,” Kusama has said, and I understand. Her work is feminine,
sprawling, heroic, psychedelic, minimalist, absurd and fecund. She
works in polka dots, giant nets and huge pumpkins. Yayoi visits
conventional reality, but doesn’t live there.

• The Art of Bill Viola
Man on fire. Man drenched in water. Man shifting through time, space
and the elements, on a thin video screen, with sound. A man comes in
and out of being before our very eyes. Genius. I love BV.

The Anti-Bono

Q: As a native of Zambia with
advanced degrees in public policy and economics from Harvard and
Oxford, you are about to publish an attack on Western aid to Africa and
its recent glamorization by celebrities. ‘‘Dead Aid,’’ as your book is
called, is particularly hard on rock stars. Have you met Bono?

I have, yes, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,
last year. It was at a party to raise money for Africans, and there
were no Africans in the room, except for me.

What do you think of him?

I’ll make a general comment about this whole dependence on
“celebrities.” I object to this situation as it is right now where they
have inadvertently or manipulatively become the spokespeople for the
African continent.

You argue in your book that Western aid to Africa
has not only perpetuated poverty but also worsened it, and you are
perhaps the first African to request in book form that all development
aid be halted within five years.

Think about it this way — China has 1.3 billion people, only 300
million of whom live like us, if you will, with Western living
standards. There are a billion Chinese who are living in substandard
conditions. Do you know anybody who feels sorry for China? Nobody.

Even though celebrating objects seems wrong at the moment, I think it's important to remember that beauty, like poetry, is not a luxury.*
It heals, inspires, and is sometimes the only thing that keeps humanity
going.

At every time, in every place, it's always about the art.

I'm so sad to hear Domino is no more. Here's to seeing the
team--Deborah and Joao and Catherine and everyone else who made the mag
gorgeous--when they reconvene to make something new.

Geronimo’s Heirs Sue Secret Yale Society Over His Skull

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

Published: February 19, 2009

The New York Times

HOUSTON — The descendants of Geronimo have sued Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale University
with ties to the Bush family, charging that its members robbed his
grave in 1918 and have kept his skull in a glass case ever since.

Agence France-Press/Getty Images

A National Archives image of Geronimo taken in 1887.

Legend has it that Prescott S. Bush stole Geronimo’s skull.

The claim is part of a lawsuit
filed in federal court in Washington on Tuesday, the 100th anniversary
of Geronimo’s death. The Apache warrior’s heirs are seeking to recover
all his remains, wherever they may be, and have them transferred to a
new grave at the headwaters of the Gila River in New Mexico, where
Geronimo was born and wished to be interred.

“I believe
strongly from my heart that his spirit was never released,” Geronimo’s
great-grandson Harlyn Geronimo, 61, told reporters Tuesday at the
National Press Club.

Geronimo died a prisoner of war at Fort
Sill, Okla., in 1909. A longstanding tradition among members of Skull
and Bones holds that Prescott S. Bush — father of President George Bush
and grandfather of President George W. Bush
— broke into the grave with some classmates during World War I and made
off with the skull, two bones, a bridle and some stirrups, all of which
were put on display at the group’s clubhouse in New Haven, known as the
Tomb.

On Chris Brown and Rihanna, from ABCNEWS.COM

Monique Wright-Williams had always forbidden her three girls from
watching hip-hop music videos because of the way they portray women as
"hoochies or sex objects," she said.

"I don't ever want them to think of themselves as a sex object," she told ABCNews.com.

So when the Syracuse, N.Y., family learned that Brown had been
arrested last week for allegedly beating his pop-star girlfriend
Rihanna, the news came as a shock. "I'm obviously disappointed,"
Wright-Williams, a youth services agency director, said. "He was in a
good position to serve so many young black children well. Whenever
anybody who is in a good position to have a nice impact on my children,
and children in general, tumbles and falls in such an important way,
it's here we go again." Perhaps. The fall of a teen idol is familiar
territory. But the swift and critical public response to Brown's arrest
from the Williams family and other members of the black community has
come as something of a surprise to some people.

Gayle King, editorial director at O, The Oprah Magazine, rejected
Brown's recent apology in which he said in a statement that he was
"sorry and saddened" and "seeking the counseling of my pastor, my
mother and other loved ones." "Right now, I can't think of anything
that makes me support anything that Chris Brown is saying at this
time," King told the entertainment news show "Extra" Sunday. "And my
heart just aches for Rihanna."

Kanye West told Ryan Seacrest last week, "I was completely
devastated by the concept of what I heard. ... I feel like that's my
baby sis. I would do any and everything to help her in any situation."
Rap mogul Jay-Z, who discovered and mentored Rihanna, reportedly "hit
the roof" when he heard about the alleged fight, according to Us Weekly
magazine. "Just imagine it being your sister or mom, and then think
about how we should talk about that," Jay-Z said of 20-year-old
Rihanna. "I just think we should all support her. She's going through a
tough time. You have to realize she's a young girl, as well. She's very
young."

And it's not just African-American celebrities who are outraged. Actress Rosanne Barr lashed out at Brown on her blog Monday.

"Chris Brown's lies and excuses make me want to beat the crap out of
him," Barr wrote. "You dirty bastard. I hope you go to prison for 10
years."

Author Rebecca Walker, who writes a blog for TheRoot.com, believes the focus should be on domestic abuse.

"I am more disappointed by the response to the incident than the
incident itself," she told ABCNews.com. "It should be used as an
opportunity to discuss violence in general, and domestic violence in
particular. It's a good place to begin a conversation about how love
shouldn't hurt, and how victims of abuse themselves often become
abusers if they don't get proper support.

"Ultimately, this issue transcends gender, race, class, etc.,"
she said. "This is about relationships and what healthy ones look like.
It's about intimacy and how little we, as a culture, know about
cultivating and maintaining it. It's about love, what it is, and what
it isn't."

Rihanna's father, Ronald Fenty, told People
magazine that he expects his daughter to address the issue. "At some
point, she will speak out," he said. "I hope she will stand up for
women all over the world." As for Brown's salvaging his once clean-cut
image and role model status, Wright-Williams said, "I think he could
still be a role model for 'I totally messed up and I will never be
accused of this again.' Or he could be found guilty and be the model of
what you don't want: You hit women, you get arrested and lose
endorsements. "Thank God we're not hinging on Chris Brown for our one
and only role model," she said. "We can easily turn to our new
president."

Today my guy told me about a bit Jon Stewart did on why Jews argue.
Apparently, a "reporter" goes and asks a bunch of Jews why they argue
all the time, and they start arguing about who should answer the
question and whether Jews argue any more than anyone else.

We both cracked up because, well, I like to tend to
argue and my son's father doesn't. I've been trying to stop and it's
the hardest thing ever. Way harder than probability and statistics
class in high school, and a quibillion times harder than the LSAT I
took a few years months ago when I was thinking about
going to law school. It's so hard that I've often wondered if I have a
neurological tic that turns even the simplest request into a
passionate, two-hour debate.

In the beginning of our relationship, I explained it was cultural. It's
a Jewish thing, I told my mate-to-be. We have strong opinions about
everything. You should see us at the dinner table, I said. No one
agrees on anything--where we should sit, whether the lighting is too
bright or too dim, if the food is overpriced or genius, if my sister
should cut her hair. Our willingness to dig deep over trivial matters
is a sign of commitment, I told him. It shows we care enough to engage
at a deep level.

Arguing, I said. It's how we love.

To which he replied, I'm not Jewish and I don't like to argue because
it raises my blood pressure and I want to have a calm, peaceful life.
You can go out into the world and argue your a** off, but for God's
sake, when you come home, can't we just get along?

Which, in my argumentative state of mind (tangentially related to Billy
Joel's New York Jewish state of mind, btw) sounded like: Jews are
crazy, can't you just be normal and not Jewish when you're at home?
Which made me mumble something about him not liking Jews, which was
awful, inaccurate, and the furthest thing from the truth.

But I was arguing. Who said I had to be rational? Terrible logic, I know. A heinous lapse. I'm still apologizing.

But back to Jon Stewart and laughing together about the pop cultural
confirmation of what I've been saying all along. No, I wasn't bat
mitzvahed. No I don't speak Yiddish or Hebrew. But yes, yes, I love a good back and forth.
So sue me.

Ironically, it was a great moment. A love moment. A moment of acceptance. A cross-cultural moment. A moment of peace. A, dare I say it, family moment.

Chrissi Coppa, writer of the blog Storked, and author of the soon to be published memoir Rattled, excerpted asha bandele's piece on choosing to divorce her incarcerated husband and become a single mom, from the new book. The comments are wonderful. Please visit and add your voice.

Chrissi on asha's essay:

"This essay is dynamic and piercing and I relate to the bones and
guts of it. It is scary knowing that if I fall no one is there to catch
me--that I have to break my own fall and catch JD in the process. My
mind races, races, races at night. I have no one to talk to or ask
questions to. I witness miraculous things daily--JD taking his pajamas
off, for one, but I have no one to squeal, "Look, look!" while I point
to JD with my camera in hand--I share these milestones with my son. It
is enough and more...but I like Asha feel the unpredictable twinges of
solitude and quiet and pressure to be on top all of the time because I
have to be. It's enough to drive me to tears and sometimes it really
does, but then I recover all over again--because I love my son. I love
him tremendously and behind the occasional tear is 100 x in smiles and
joy--an easy joy with no reason or force, just a peaceful full circle
coming to all ends. It's seamless.